The Riddle of Babi Yar: The True Story Told by a Survivor of by Ziama Trubakov

His identify used to be Ziama – a gorgeous Jewish identify which he needed to swap to the Russian ‘Zakhar’ with a purpose to disguise his origins. whilst all Jews have been ordered to seem at a meeting aspect, he didn’t cross and persuaded others to not pass both. Pretending to be a collaborator for the profession gurus, he saved on saving lives. He rode his motorbike to within reach villages to negotiate items for his relations, whilst attempting to get involved with partisan devices. Like a true ‘superhero’, he constantly had a slim break out till denounced through a traitor. Even then, within the focus camp, pressured to exhume and burn the corpses of these massacred within the first months of the profession, he didn’t think about loss of life – he considered freedom. And he led others with him - out from the camp, in the direction of existence and a contented destiny – only a day prior to their scheduled execution. within the night-time streets of Kiev, hiding from patrols, they made their manner domestic, to reunite with their households. A dreamlike tale, yet a real one. a few say, Ziama by no means existed and the tale is fiction. To contradict this assertion and to turn out the authenticity of the defined occasions, i discovered transcripts of interrogations by way of the KGB of the witnesses and of these to blame of the crimes devoted in Babi Yar, Kiev, in 1941-1943. this can be the reality the area must comprehend. The additional away in time we're from the Holocaust, the extra denial and the extra lies we come across. in order that no Jew should still ever need to disguise lower than a Gentile identify, in order that no Jew may still ever have his lifestyles threatened for the mere proven fact that he's a Jew – learn and unfold Ziama’s message in the course of the international. And if the worst occurs and historical past repeats itself – allow Ziama’s heroism be an instance to we all on how one can struggle again and never let whatever to smash us. right here eventually, after 70 years, is the ultimate fact approximately Babi Yar.

A brand new, multiplied variation of Rena's Promise went on sale March 17, 2015. locate it indexed within the different variants of this identify, or seek by means of ISBN: 978-080709313-9.

Sent to Auschwitz at the first Jewish delivery, Rena Kornreich survived the Nazi loss of life camps for over 3 years. whereas there she used to be reunited along with her sister Danka. on a daily basis turned a fight to satisfy the promise Rena made to her mom whilst the relations was once pressured to separate apart--a promise to keep up her sister.

One of the few Holocaust memoirs concerning the lives of girls within the camps, Rena's Promise is a compelling tale of the fleeting human connections that fostered choice and made survival available. From the bonds among moms, daughters, and sisters, to the hyperlinks among prisoners, or even prisoners and guards, Rena's Promise reminds us of the humanity and wish that survives inordinate inhumanity.

Judenjagd, hunt for the Jews, was once the German time period for the prepared searches for Jews who, having survived ghetto liquidations and deportations to loss of life camps in Poland in 1942, tried to conceal "on the Aryan facet. " Jan Grabowski's penetrating microhistory tells the tale of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland, the place nearly all of the Jews in hiding perished by reason of betrayal by way of their Polish pals.

Additional resources for The Riddle of Babi Yar: The True Story Told by a Survivor of the Mass Murders in Kiev, 1941-1943

Example text

Aware of the helplessness of our anti-aircraft defense, they bombed residential areas of the city even in daytime. Kievers found refuge from the enemy’s incendiary bombes on the ground floors and in the basements of buildings, for protection surrounded at the perimeter with sacs of sand. The front was invincibly approaching the suburbs. The cannonade, not so distant any more, kept us alert day and night. Rumor had it that shells were reaching the streets. But the Soviet propaganda gave the lie to the statement that Stalin issued an order not to retreat from Kiev.

IX. THE THUGS ARE IN A HURRY X. MORGEN KAPUTT XI. IT SAVED MY LIFE XII. THE RED ARMY IS NEAR EPILOG APPENDIX 1 Transcripts of interrogations in the KGB of former prisoners of Syrets camp, witnesses to the atrocities in Babi Yar, and of defendants APPENDIX 2: More photographs of the locations described in the novel. AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION It is so very hard to recollect all the horrors that my comrades and I went through during the war and occupation of Kiev. Skeptics and unconcerned people shouldn’t say: “Time heals everything, and memories cannot upset a person half a century later…” While working on the text of this book I relived again and again all the hardships, the feelings of fear, hunger, and despair.

Naturally, his wife and daughter accompanied him. With a lot of regret they packed some of their belongings and left their beautiful apartment in Tarasovskaya Street, a very Jewish neighborhood at that time. Little did they know that very soon many of their neighbors, friends, and her great-uncle’s family would walk across the city towards Babi Yar –never to return! My dear aunt, with whom I was very close and who taught me many good things, would have perished there with all others, if it hadn’t been for a lucky turn of fate.